A ransomware outbreak that hit QuickBooks cloud hosting firm iNSYNQ in mid-July appears to have started with an email phishing attack that snared an employee working in sales for the company, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. It also looks like the intruders spent roughly ten days rooting around iNSYNQ’s internal network to properly stage things before unleashing the ransomware. iNSYNQ ultimately declined to pay the ransom demand, and it is still working to completely restore customer access to files.

Some of this detail came in a virtual “town hall” meeting held August 8, in which iNSYNQ chief executive Elliot Luchansky briefed customers on how it all went down, and what the company is doing to prevent such outages in the future.

A great many iNSYNQ’s customers are accountants, and when the company took its network offline on July 16 in response to the ransomware outbreak, some of those customers took to social media to complain that iNSYNQ was stonewalling them.

“We could definitely have been better prepared, and it’s totally unacceptable,” Luchansky told customers. “I take full responsibility for this. People waiting ridiculous amounts of time for a response is unacceptable.”

By way of explaining iNSYNQ’s initial reluctance to share information about the particulars of the attack early on, Luchansky told customers the company had to assume the intruders were watching and listening to everything iNSYNQ was doing to recover operations and data in the wake of the ransomware outbreak.

“That was done strategically for a good reason,” he said. “There were human beings involved with [carrying out] this attack in real time, and we had to assume they were monitoring everything we could say. And that posed risks based on what we did say publicly while the ransom negotiations were going on. It could have been used in a way that would have exposed customers even more. That put us in a really tough bind, because transparency is something we take very seriously. But we decided it was in our customers’ best interests to not do that.”

Luchansky did not say how much the intruders were demanding, but he mentioned two key factors that informed the company’s decision not to pay up.

“It was a very substantial amount, but we had the money wired and were ready to pay it in cryptocurrency in the case that it made sense to do so,” he told customers. “But we also understood [that paying] would put a target on our heads in the future, and even if we actually received the decryption key, that wasn’t really the main issue here. Because of the quick reaction we had, we were able to contain the encryption part” to roughly 50 percent of customer systems, he said.

Luchansky said the intruders seeded its internal network with MegaCortex, a potent new ransomware strain first spotted just a couple of months ago that is being used in targeted attacks on enterprises. He said the attack appears to have been carefully planned out in advance and executed “with human intervention all the way through.”

“They decided they were coming after us,” he said. “It’s one thing to prepare for these sorts of events but it’s an entirely different experience to deal with first hand.”

According to an analysis of MegaCortex published this week by Accenture iDefense, the crooks behind this ransomware strain are targeting businesses — not home users — and demanding ransom payments in the range of two to 600 bitcoins, which is roughly $20,000 to $5.8 million.

“We are working for profit,” reads the ransom note left behind by the latest version of MegaCortex. “The core of this criminal business is to give back your valuable data in the original form (for ransom of course).”

Luchansky did not mention in the town hall meeting exactly when the initial phishing attack was thought to have occurred, noting that iNSYNQ is still working with California-based CrowdStrike to gain a more complete picture of the attack.

But Alex Holden, founder of Milwaukee-based cyber intelligence firm Hold Security, showed KrebsOnSecurity information obtained from monitoring dark web communications which suggested the problem started on July 6, after an employee in iNSYNQ’s sales division fell for a targeted phishing email.

“This shows that even after the initial infection, if companies act promptly they can still detect and stop the ransomware,” Holden said. “For these infections hackers take sometimes days, weeks, or even months to encrypt your data.”

iNSYNQ did not respond to requests for comment on Hold Security’s findings.

Asked whether the company had backups of customer data and — if so — why iNSYNQ decided not to restore from those, Luchansky said there were backups but that some of those were also infected.

“The backup system is backing up the primary system, and that by definition entails some level of integration,” Luchansky explained. “The way our system was architected, the malware had spread into the backups as well, at least a little bit. So [by] just turning the backups back on, there was a good chance the the virus would then start to spread through the backup system more. So we had to treat the backups similarly to how we were treating the primary systems.”

Luchansky said their backup system has since been overhauled, and that if a similar attack happened in the future it would take days instead of weeks to recover. However, he declined to get into specifics about exactly what had changed, which is too bad because in every ransomware attack story I’ve written this seems to be the detail most readers are interested in and arguing about.

The CEO added that iNSYNQ also will be partnering with a company that helps firms detect and block targeted phishing attacks, and that it envisioned being able to offer this to its customers at a discounted rate. It wasn’t clear from Luchansky’s responses to questions whether the cloud hosting firm was also considering any kind of employee anti-phishing education and/or testing service.

Luchansky said iNSYNQ was about to restore access to more than 90 percent of customer files by Aug. 2 — roughly two weeks after the ransomware outbreak — and that the company would be offering customers a two month credit as a result of the outage.

If you bank online and choose weak or re-used passwords, there’s a decent chance your account could be pilfered by cyberthieves — even if your bank offers multi-factor authentication as part of its login process. This story is about how crooks increasingly are abusing third-party financial aggregation services like Mint, Plaid, Yodlee, YNAB and others to surveil and drain consumer accounts online.

Crooks are constantly probing bank Web sites for customer accounts protected by weak or recycled passwords. Most often, the attacker will use lists of email addresses and passwords stolen en masse from hacked sites and then try those same credentials to see if they permit online access to accounts at a range of banks.

From there, thieves can take the list of successful logins and feed them into apps that rely on application programming interfaces (API)s from one of several personal financial data aggregators which help users track their balances, budgets and spending across multiple banks.

A number of banks that do offer customers multi-factor authentication — such as a one-time code sent via text message or an app — have chosen to allow these aggregators the ability to view balances and recent transactions without requiring that the aggregator service supply that second factor. That’s according to Brian Costello, vice president of data strategy at Yodlee, one of the largest financial aggregator platforms.

Costello said while some banks have implemented processes which pass through multi-factor authentication (MFA) prompts when consumers wish to link aggregation services, many have not.

“Because we have become something of a known quantity with the banks, we’ve set up turning off MFA with many of them,” Costello said.  “Many of them are substituting coming from a Yodlee IP or agent as a factor because banks have historically been relying on our security posture to help them out.”

Such reconnaissance helps lay the groundwork for further attacks: If the thieves are able to access a bank account via an aggregator service or API, they can view the customer’s balance(s) and decide which customers are worthy of further targeting.

This targeting can occur in at least one of two ways. The first involves spear phishing attacks to gain access to that second authentication factor, which can be made much more convincing once the attackers have access to specific details about the customer’s account — such as recent transactions or account numbers (even partial account numbers).

The second is through an unauthorized SIM swap, a form of fraud in which scammers bribe or trick employees at mobile phone stores into seizing control of the target’s phone number and diverting all texts and phone calls to the attacker’s mobile device.

But beyond targeting customers for outright account takeovers, the data available via financial aggregators enables a far more insidious type of fraud: The ability to link the target’s bank account(s) to other accounts that the attackers control.

That’s because PayPal, Zelle, and a number of other pure-play online financial institutions allow customers to link accounts by verifying the value of microdeposits. For example, if you wish to be able to transfer funds between PayPal and a bank account, the company will first send a couple of tiny deposits  — a few cents, usually — to the account you wish to link. Only after verifying those exact amounts will the account-linking request be granted.

Alex Holden is founder and chief technology officer of Hold Security, a Milwaukee-based security consultancy. Holden and his team closely monitor the cybercrime forums, and he said the company has seen a number of cybercriminals discussing how the financial aggregators are useful for targeting potential victims.

Holden said it’s not uncommon for thieves in these communities to resell access to bank account balance and transaction information to other crooks who specialize in cashing out such information.

“The price for these details is often very cheap, just a fraction of the monetary value in the account, because they’re not selling ‘final’ access to the account,” Holden said. “If the account is active, hackers then can go to the next stage for 2FA phishing or social engineering, or linking the accounts with another.”

Currently, the major aggregators and/or applications that use those platforms store bank logins and interactively log in to consumer accounts to periodically sync transaction data. But most of the financial aggregator platforms are slowly shifting toward using the OAuth standard for logins, which can give banks a greater ability to enforce their own fraud detection and transaction scoring systems when aggregator systems and apps are initially linked to a bank account.

That’s according to Don Cardinal, managing director of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), which is seeking to unite the financial industry around a common, interoperable, and royalty-free standard for secure consumer and business access to their financial data.

“This is where we’re going,” Cardinal said. “The way it works today, you the aggregator or app stores the credentials encrypted and presents them to the bank. What we’re moving to is [an account linking process] that interactively loads the bank’s Web site, you login there, and the site gives the aggregator an OAuth token. In that token granting process, all the bank’s fraud controls are then direct to the consumer.”

Alissa Knight, a senior analyst with the Aite Group, a financial and technology analyst firm, said such attacks highlight the need to get rid of passwords altogether. But until such time, she said, more consumers should take full advantage of the strongest multi-factor authentication option offered by their bank(s), and consider using a password manager, which helps users pick and remember strong and unique passwords for each Web site.

“This is just more empirical data around the fact that passwords just need to go away,” Knight said. “For now, all the standard precautions we’ve been giving consumers for years still stand: Pick strong passwords, avoid re-using passwords, and get a password manager.”

Some of the most popular password managers include 1Password, Dashlane, LastPass and Keepass. Wired.com recently published a worthwhile writeup which breaks down each of these based on price, features and usability.

Federal prosecutors this week charged a Seattle woman with stealing data from more than 100 million credit applications made with Capital One Financial Corp. Incredibly, much of this breach played out publicly over several months on social media and other open online platforms. What follows is a closer look at the accused, and what this incident may mean for consumers and businesses.

On July 29, FBI agents arrested Paige A. Thompson on suspicion of downloading nearly 30 GB of Capital One credit application data from a rented cloud data server. Capital One said the incident affected approximately 100 million people in the United States and six million in Canada.

That data included approximately 140,000 Social Security numbers and approximately 80,000 bank account numbers on U.S. consumers, and roughly 1 million Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) for Canadian credit card customers.

“Importantly, no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised,” Capital One said in a statement posted to its site.

“The largest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019,” the statement continues. “This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.”

The FBI says Capital One learned about the theft from a tip sent via email on July 17, which alerted the company that some of its leaked data was being stored out in the open on the software development platform Github. That Github account was for a user named “Netcrave,” which includes the resume and name of one Paige A. Thompson.

The complaint doesn’t explicitly name the cloud hosting provider from which the Capital One credit data was taken, but it does say the accused’s resume states that she worked as a systems engineer at the provider between 2015 and 2016. That resume, available on Gitlab here, reveals Thompson’s most recent employer was Amazon Inc.

Further investigation revealed that Thompson used the nickname “erratic” on Twitter, where she spoke openly over several months about finding huge stores of data intended to be secured on various Amazon instances.

According to the FBI, Thompson also used a public Meetup group under the same alias, where she invited others to join a Slack channel named “Netcrave Communications.”

KrebsOnSecurity was able to join this open Slack channel Monday evening and review many months of postings apparently made by Erratic about her personal life, interests and online explorations. One of the more interesting posts by Erratic on the Slack channel is a June 27 comment listing various databases she found by hacking into improperly secured Amazon cloud instances.

That posting suggests Erratic may also have located tens of gigabytes of data belonging to other major corporations:

Erratic also posted frequently to Slack about her struggles with gender identity, lack of employment, and persistent suicidal thoughts. In several conversations, Erratic makes references to running a botnet of sorts, although it is unclear how serious those claims were. Specifically, Erratic mentions one botnet involved in cryptojacking, which uses snippets of code installed on Web sites — often surreptitiously — designed to mine cryptocurrencies.

None of Erratic’s postings suggest Thompson sought to profit from selling the data taken from various Amazon cloud instances she was able to access. But it seems likely that at least some of that data could have been obtained by others who may have followed her activities on different social media platforms.

Ray Watson, a cybersecurity researcher at cloud security firm Masergy, said the Capital One incident contains the hallmarks of many other modern data breaches.

“The attacker was a former employee of the web hosting company involved, which is what is often referred to as insider threats,” Watson said. “She allegedly used web application firewall credentials to obtain privilege escalation. Also the use of Tor and an offshore VPN for obfuscation are commonly seen in similar data breaches.”

“The good news, however, is that Capital One Incidence Response was able to move quickly once they were informed of a possible breach via their Responsible Disclosure program, which is something a lot of other companies struggle with,” he continued.

In Capital One’s statement about the breach, company chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank said the financial institution fixed the configuration vulnerability that led to the data theft and promptly began working with federal law enforcement.

“Based on our analysis to date, we believe it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by this individual,” Fairbank said. “While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened. I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”

Capital One says it will notify affected individuals via a variety of channels, and make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected.

Bloomberg reports that in court on Monday, Thompson broke down and laid her head on the defense table during the hearing. She is charged with a single count of computer fraud and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson will be held in custody until her bail hearing, which is set for August 1.

A copy of the complaint against Thompson is available here.

Update, 3:38 p.m. ET: I’ve reached out to several companies that appear to be listed in the last screenshot above. Infoblox [an advertiser on this site] responded with the following statement:

“Infoblox is aware of the pending investigation of the Capital One hacking attack, and that Infoblox is among the companies referenced in the suspected hacker’s alleged online communications. Infoblox is continuing to investigate the matter, but at this time there is no indication that Infoblox was in any way involved with the reported Capital One breach. Additionally, there is no indication of an intrusion or data breach involving Infoblox causing any customer data to be exposed.”

Much has been written about the need to further secure our elections, from ensuring the integrity of voting machines to combating fake news. But according to a report quietly issued by a California grand jury this week, more attention needs to be paid to securing social media and email accounts used by election officials at the state and local level.

California has a civil grand jury system designed to serve as an independent oversight of local government functions, and each county impanels jurors to perform this service annually. On Wednesday, a grand jury from San Mateo County in northern California released a report which envisions the havoc that might be wrought on the election process if malicious hackers were able to hijack social media and/or email accounts and disseminate false voting instructions or phony election results.

“Imagine that a hacker hijacks one of the County’s official social media accounts and uses it to report false results on election night and that local news outlets then redistribute those fraudulent election results to the public,” the report reads.

“Such a scenario could cause great confusion and erode public confidence in our elections, even if the vote itself is actually secure,” the report continues. “Alternatively, imagine that a hacker hijacks the County’s elections website before an election and circulates false voting instructions designed to frustrate the efforts of some voters to participate in the election. In that case, the interference could affect the election outcome, or at least call the results into question.”

In San Mateo County, the office of the Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder and Elections (ACRE) is responsible for carrying out elections and announcing local results. The ACRE sends election information to some 43,000 registered voters who’ve subscribed to receive sample ballots and voter information, and its Web site publishes voter eligibility information along with instructions on how and where to cast ballots.

The report notes that concerns about the security of these channels is hardly theoretical: In 2010, intruders hijacked ACRE’s election results Web page, and in 2016, cyber thieves successfully breached several county employee email accounts in a spear-phishing attack.

In the wake of the 2016 attack, San Mateo County instituted two-factor authentication for its email accounts — requiring each user to log in with a password and a one-time code sent via text message to their mobile device. However, the county uses its own Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts to share election information, and these accounts are not currently secured by two-factor authentication, the report found.

“The Grand Jury finds that the security protections against hijacking of ACRE’s website, email, and social media accounts are not adequate to protect against the current cyber threats. These vulnerabilities expose the public to potential disinformation by hackers who could hijack an ACRE online communication platform to mislead voters before an election or sow confusion afterward. Public confidence is at stake, even if the vote itself is secure.”

The jury recommended the county take full advantage of the most secure two-factor authentication now offered by all of these social media platforms: The use of a FIDO physical security key, a small hardware device which allows the user to complete the login process simply by inserting the USB device and pressing a button. The key works without the need for any special software drivers [full disclosure: Yubico, a major manufacturer of security keys, is currently an advertiser on this site.]

Additionally, the report urges election officials to migrate away from one-time codes sent via text message, as these can be intercepted via man-in-the-middle (MitM) and SIM-swapping attacks.  MitM attacks use counterfeit login pages to steal credentials and one-time codes.

An unauthorized SIM swap is an increasingly rampant form of fraud in which scammers bribe or trick employees at mobile phone stores into seizing control of the target’s phone number and diverting all texts and phone calls to the attacker’s mobile device.

Samy Tarazi is a sergeant with the sheriff’s office in nearby Santa Clara County and a supervisor with the REACT Task Force, a team of law enforcement officers that has been tracking down individuals perpetrating SIM swapping attacks. Tarazi said he fully expects SIM swapping to emerge as a real threat to state and local election workers, as well as to staff and volunteers working for candidates.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some major candidate or their staff has an email or social media account with tons of important stuff on there [whose password] can be reset with just a text message,” Tarazi told KrebsOnSecurity. “I hope that doesn’t happen, but politicians are regular people who use the same tools we use.”

A copy of the San Mateo County grand jury report is available here (PDF).

Big-three credit bureau Equifax has reportedly agreed to pay at least $650 million to settle lawsuits stemming from a 2017 breach that let intruders steal personal and financial data on roughly 148 million Americans. Here’s a brief primer that attempts to break down what this settlement means for you, and what it says about the value of your identity.

 

Q: What happened?

A: If the terms of the settlement are approved by a court, the Federal Trade Commission says Equifax will be required to spend up to $425 million helping consumers who can demonstrate they were financially harmed by the breach. The company also will provide up to 10 years of free credit monitoring to those who had their data exposed.

Q: What about the rest of the money in the settlement?

A: An as-yet undisclosed amount will go to pay lawyers fees for the plaintiffs.

Q: $650 million seems like a lot. Is that some kind of record?

A: If not, it’s pretty close. The New York Times reported earlier today that it was thought to be the largest settlement ever paid by a company over a data breach, but that statement doesn’t appear anywhere in their current story.

Q: Hang on…148 million affected consumers…out of that $425 million pot that comes to just $2.87 per victim, right?

A: That’s one way of looking at it. But as always, the devil is in the details. You won’t see a penny or any other benefit unless you do something about it, and how much you end up costing the company (within certain limits) is up to you.

The Times reports that the proposed settlement assumes that only around seven million people will sign up for their credit monitoring offers. “If more do, Equifax’s costs for providing it could rise meaningfully,” the story observes.

Q: Okay. What can I do?

A: You can visit www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com, although none of this will be official or on offer until a court approves the settlement.

Q: Uh, that doesn’t look like Equifax’s site…

A: Good eyes! It’s not. It’s run by a third party. But we should probably just be grateful for that; given Equifax’s total dumpster fire of a public response to the breach, the company has shown itself incapable of operating (let alone securing) a properly functioning Web site.

Q: What can I get out of this?

A: In a nutshell, affected consumers are eligible to apply for one or more remedies, including:

–Free credit monitoring: At least three years of credit monitoring via all three major bureaus simultaneously, including Equifax, Experian and Trans Union. The settlement also envisions up to six more years of single bureau monitoring through Experian. Or, if you don’t want to take advantage of the credit monitoring offers, you can opt instead for a $125 cash payment. You can’t get both.

–Reimbursement: …For the time you spent remedying identity theft or misuse of your personal information caused by the breach, or purchasing credit monitoring or credit reports. This is capped at 20 total hours at $25 per hour ($500). Total cash reimbursement payment will not exceed $20,000 per consumer.

–Help with ongoing identity theft issues: Up to seven years of “free assisted identity restoration services.” Again, the existing breach settlement page is light on specifics there.

Q: Does this cover my kids/dependents, too?

A: The FTC says if you were a minor in May 2017 (when Equifax first learned of the breach), you are eligible for a total of 18 years of free credit monitoring.

Q: How do I take advantage of any of these?

A: You can’t yet. The settlement has to be approved first. The settlement Web site says to check back again later. In addition to checking the breach settlement site periodically, consumers can sign up with the FTC to receive email updates about this settlement.

The settlement site said consumers also can call 1-833-759-2982 for more information. Press #2 on your phone’s keypad if you want to skip the 1-minute preamble and get straight into the queue to speak with a real person.

KrebsOnSecurity dialed in to ask for more details on the “free assisted identity restoration services,” and the person who took my call said they’d need to have some basic information about me in order to proceed. He said they needed my name, address and phone number to proceed. I gave him a number and a name, and after checking with someone he came back and said the restoration services would be offered by Equifax, but confirmed that affected consumers would still have to apply for it.

He added that the Equifaxbreachsettlement.com site will soon include a feature that lets visitors check to see if they’re eligible, but also confirmed that just checking eligibility won’t entitle one to any of the above benefits: Consumers will still need to file a claim through the site (when it’s available to do so).

ANALYSIS

We’ll see how this unfolds, but I’ll be amazed if anything related to taking advantage of this settlement is painless. I still can’t even get a free copy of my credit report from Equifax, as I’m entitled to under the law for free each year. I’ve even requested a copy by mail, according to their instructions. So far nothing.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that our questioner is basically right — that this settlement breaks down to about $3 worth of flesh extracted from Equifax for each affected person. The thing is, this figure probably is less than what Equifax makes selling your credit history to potential creditors each year.

In a 2017 story about the Equifax breach, I quoted financial fraud expert Avivah Litan saying the credit bureaus make about $1 every time they sell your credit file to a potential creditor (or identity thief posing as you). According to recent stats from the New York Federal Reserve, there were around 145 million hard credit pulls in the fourth quarter of 2018 (it’s not known how many of those were legitimate or desired).

But there is something you can do to stop the Equifax and the other bureaus from profiting this way: Freeze your credit files with them.

A security freeze essentially blocks any potential creditors from being able to view or “pull” your credit file, unless you affirmatively unfreeze or thaw your file beforehand. With a freeze in place on your credit file, ID thieves can apply for credit in your name all they want, but they will not succeed in getting new lines of credit in your name because few if any creditors will extend that credit without first being able to gauge how risky it is to loan to you. And it’s now free for all Americans.

This post explains in detail what’s involved in freezing your files; how to place, thaw or remove a freeze; the limitations of a freeze and potential side effects; and alternatives to freezes.

What’s wrong with just using credit monitoring, you might ask? These services do not prevent thieves from using your identity to open new lines of credit, and from damaging your good name for years to come in the process. The most you can hope for is that credit monitoring services will alert you soon after an ID thief does steal your identity.

If past experience is any teacher, anyone with a freeze on their credit file will need to briefly thaw their file at Equifax before successfully signing up for the service when it’s offered. Since a law mandating free freezes across the land went into effect, all three bureaus have made it significantly easier to place and lift security freezes.

Probably too easy, in fact. Especially for people who had freezes in place before Equifax revamped its freeze portal. Those folks were issued a numeric PIN to lift, thaw or remove a freeze, but Equifax no longer lets those users do any of those things online with just the PIN.

These days, that PIN doesn’t play a role in any freeze or thaw process. To create an account at the MyEquifax portal, one need only supply name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, any phone number  (all data points exposed in the Equifax breach, and in any case widely available for sale in the cybercrime underground) and answer 4 multiple-guess questions whose answers are often available in public records or on social media.

And so this is yet another reason why you should freeze your credit: If you don’t sign up as you at MyEquifax, someone else might do it for you.

What else can you do in the meantime? Be wary of any phone calls or emails you didn’t sign up for that invoke this data breach settlement and ask you to provide personal and/or financial information.

And if you haven’t done so lately, go get a free copy of your credit report from annualcreditreport.com; by law all Americans are entitled to a free report from each of the major bureaus annually. You can opt for one report, or all three at once. Either way, make sure to read the report(s) closely and dispute anything that looks amiss.

It has long been my opinion that the big three bureaus are massively stifling innovation and offering consumers so little choice or say in the bargain that’s being made on the backs of their hard work, integrity and honesty. The real question is, if someone or something eventually serves to dis-intermediate the big three and throw the doors wide open to competition, what would the net effect for consumers?

Obviously, there is no way to know for sure, but a company that truly offered to pay consumers anywhere near what their data is actually worth would probably wipe these digital dinosaurs from the face of the earth.

That is, if the banks could get on board. After all, the banks and their various fingers are what drive the credit industry. And these giants don’t move very nimbly. They’re massively hard to turn on the simplest changes. And they’re not known for quickly warming to an entirely new model of doing business (i.e. huge cost investments).

My hometown Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) seems to suggest the $650 million settlement was about half what it should be.

“Americans don’t choose to have companies like Equifax collecting their data – by the nature of their business models, credit bureaus collect your personal information whether you want them to or not. In light of that, the penalties for failing to secure that data should be appropriately steep. While I’m happy to see that customers who have been harmed as a result of Equifax’s shoddy cybersecurity practices will see some compensation, we need structural reforms and increased oversight of credit reporting agencies in order to make sure that this never happens again.”

Sen. Warner sponsored a bill along with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) called “The Data Breach Prevention and Compensation Act,” which calls for “robust compensation to consumers for stolen data; mandatory penalties on credit reporting agencies (CRAs) for data breaches; and giving the FTC more direct supervisory authority over data security at CRAs.

“Had the bill been in effect prior to the 2017 Equifax breach, the company would have had to pay at least $1.5 billion for their failure to protect Americans’ personal information,” Warner’s statement concludes.

Update, 4:44 pm: Added statement from Sen. Warner.